Thursday, February 4, 2016

Chip-embedded passport by end-2017



Ghana is racing against time to meet the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) ultimatum by 2017 to upgrade its passport to meet global standards, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Hannah Tetteh has confirmed.

 
She explained that no funds from the approved budget for 2016 will be used to support the passport upgrade, which will be solely executed on a Build Own Transfer (B.O.T) arrangement. 

“The company is expected to pre-finance and over a period of time be part of a negotiation between the company and the Ministry; they will be able to recover their investment and at the same time we should be able to provide upgraded passports for our citizens.”

Already, international firms have been invited to submit bids -- and according to the MP for Okaikoi Central, Patrick Boamah, the Foreign Affairs Ministry is requiring that companies who want to show interest in the project should have a seed money of US$100million. He also questioned whether the international advertisement would not “shut the door on local companies”. 

However, the Minister maintained: “What we said was that companies that want to participate should have a turnover not capital. The reason we did so was that by our cost estimates there will be a significant amount of money required from such companies upfront in order that we be enabled to implement this project, which is a B.O.T arrangement”.

Furthermore, she added that the ministry has anticipated the capital intensity of the project and does not want to go back to Parliament for any kind of financial assistance or government guarantee. 

“We want to ensure that the company has the wherewithal to implement the project, even if it does not have the finance itself and also needs to borrow in order to execute the project. The strength of its own balance sheet should be sufficient for it to be able to do so. It is not a question of not wanting to include a Ghanaian company; it is about making sure that whoever becomes our partner in this process has the capacity,” she said. 

Ms. Tetteh also explained that the hand-written passport is no longer valid, and says attempts to apply for visas with those will fail.  

The black passport remains valid but for a limited period of time, and the green coloured passport currently in use is not accepted by some countries due to the absence of some features, she added.

It is for this reason the ministry intends to introduce the chip-embedded passport in the short to long-term.

Parliament has already approved an amount of GH₵300million for activities of the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

During this year, applications for Ghanaian passports are also expected to be done online.The Passport Office will roll-out its online application system, which is also expected to help check the incidence of passport racketeering.

Source:B&FT 

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